Pitt's Bytes 7.30.07

From the Tech Council: Entrepreneurs Network Social "You're an entrepreneur. You work hard to grow your business. You deserve a break! [PB note: Sounds like a cross between Miller Time and a Big Mac Attack!] Join like-minded entrepreneurs and make new connections as HELP, Idea Foundry, Innovation Works, the Pittsburgh Technology Council and TiE Pittsburgh present the Entrepreneurs Network Social. Enjoy hot food, cold drinks and engaging conversation at The Library, a newly renovated South Side restaurant and bar. But don't attend if you're in the mood for a long presentation: this event is strictly recreational! Sponsored by Citizens Bank and the School of Business, Duquesne University, Entrepreneurial Studies. Date: Thursday, August 2 Time: 5 - 7 p.m. Venue: The Library, 2304 E. Carson St., South Side Council and TiE Member Cost: $20 Non-Member Cost: $30 . . . Pop City has hired a writer to cover the local tech beat. Welcome Debra Smit, and check out PC's "Pittsburgh Innovates" page . . . Shameless self-promotion: I'm part of a local group that is brainstorming foundations for an emerging "new" Pittsburgh. Our work was featured in the Post-Gazette's new, regular "Diaspora Report." Will economic development pros take notice? Maybe. . . . The Post-Gazette painted a picture yesterday, contrasting the contemporary friction between Pgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and County Executive Dan Onorato, on the one hand, with the public/private partnerships that produced Renaissance I and Renaissance II, on the other hand. And some people wonder why Pittsburgh isn't a great city today? Maybe Mike Tomlin should be in charge. The man has a plan.

More on Multiple Pittsburghs

Here's an excellent comment on my post regarding the multiple Pittsburghs. I've added some paragraphing for clarity:

It’s interesting to see how the pasts of the various Pittsburghs have
influenced how these different groups are viewing their prospects in a new regional economy.

Traditional Pittsburghers have for the most part resigned themselves to the fact that the old economy is over, and they are skeptical that anything acceptable can be developed that will help them or bring their kids back to the region. For those that have come to grips with the current economy,especially those in their golden years, prestige is more important than reinvention. Losing the status of major city is more important that developing a competitive economy.

Poor Pittsburgh never really had a shot in the region’s traditional economy, and they’re not expecting much out of the new economy either. In the meantime the social and support networks from which they’ve relied have become frayed, and their communities more fragile. In a region where opportunity is viewed in short supply, there’s always a need for someone to pick up the garbage, make beds, or clean houses and offices, and this will be needed no matter the state of the economy.

Corporate Pittsburgh sees its paternalist role as holding everything together, which mainly means keeping up appearances, keeping a lid on any potential social revolt (many remember the smoke rising from the Hill in 1968), and keeping their corporations in business. They’ve taken on the role of entrepreneurially developing regional assets in order to be economically competitive, and their lack of entrepreneurial skills is telling.

New Pittsburgh is the future, and they, along with their civic boosters, are waiting out the obstructionalists (Traditional and Corporate Pittsburgh) so that they can step forward and redefine the regional economy and its institutions.

The problem with all of this is that there has been very little work to bring these different groups together to negotiate an economic future where opportunity and wealth are expanded and shared. Part of this is because most feel that decisions about the region’s economic future isn’t, and shouldn’t, be in their hands. Economic decision-making is something best left to experts, and outside of the political process. The belief in the public’s right to consent in the region’s economic development investments is almost pre-Enlightenment in its absurdity.

But if the region is going to bring these populations together, there must be a shared agenda, and that shared agenda has to be built not from power relationships or a skepticism that change is possible, but from a sense of shared benefit from change. The institutional infrastructure to broker these kinds of discussions is really not in place. In the forties Lawrence and Mellon could engage the rank and file and the corporate leadership around a strategy to transform the city into a corporate headquarters. They were strong leaders, certainly, but they also needed consent. The plan gained consent because it was felt that this proposed future was in their best interest. When that strategy failed (as did numerous neighborhood redevelopment strategies), and folks learned what is was like to be left on the short end of what was supposed to benefit all, a distrust set in that many consider insurmountable. Absent negotiation, Pittsburgh’s economic future will depend upon endurance built from a sense of scarcity, rather than growth built from the value of contribution. Could the fruits of victory be more bitter?

Manifesto Meme

Bill Toland at the Post-Gazette puts the Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh at the center of today's Diaspora Report column. Thanks!

Link

It Isn't Easy Being Green

But Pittsburgh is trying. Pop City has a neat feature on urban farming in Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh's Green Revolution

A few notes on recent green initiatives in and around and involving Pittsburgh:

Chris Briem notes biodiesel availability in Oakland.

An Oceana Group report argues that PPG can reduce or eliminate mercury discharges at a chlorine plant in Natrium, WVa. Link, and link.

Joe, my Mt. Lebanon co-blogger, sent me these links describing what one city is doing aggressively to address environmental issues. Link, and link.

Chris Schultz of Green is Good is blogging and organizing on a green tear.

Pittsburgh Green Drinks is organizing gatherings monthly at Bossa Nova.

Sustainable Pittsburgh has a healthy roster of events.

The Pittsburgh Technology Council has launched the ECO Pulse newsletter, focusing on energy and environmental resource issues affecting local businesses.

Last month, local firm Plextronics was awarded funding by the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar America Initiative (SAI). According to a Plex press release, the award comes from the SAI's Photovoltaic Technology Incubator, a program created to make solar photovoltaic technologies competitive with existing technologies by 2015.

Pitt's Bytes 7.23.07

Whither the Cupcake Class? Long-suffering Pittsblog (and Post-Gazette) readers will remember a series of posts from the early weeks of 2007 that chronicled the rise and relevance of Pittsburgh's upscale cupcake retailers, serving a bellweather constituency that I labeled -- tongue-in-cheek -- the "Cupcake Class." The series culminated in this P-G op-ed, with typically astute companion commentary and data wrangling from Chris Briem. Several months onward, what have we learned? This email alighted in my in-box last week: The author was "particularly impressed with your analysis of Cupcake Trends. It is among the most important and enjoyable analysis of the region that I have come across." Seriously. If we have to explain the joke . . . . Pittsburgh renewal is in the air: Jason Head of Refresh Pittsburgh let me know that the group meets regularly to promote the Net developer community in Pittsburgh. The next gathering is July 25 at the Creative Treehouse in Bellevue. . . . Pittsburgh native and CMU alum Hooman Rafdar is one of Business Week's "Wizards of Widgets." With fellow CMU alum Austin Fath, Hooman is the co-founder of ClearSpring, born in Pittsburgh and now located in Northern Virginia. He blogs at Widgify. . . . Press Release Time: Monroeville-based LearningPoint has changed its name to SimonShows. CEO Kevin Orzechowski says that the company has several new web-sharing tools for the media-rich environment in the pipeline -- for both corporate and consumer users. . . . Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime - previously Apollo) Bus Tour will be rolling into town on August 17th.The event will be happening at the Heinz History Center. For more information on the upcoming Adobe AIR tour event, visit onair.adobe.com. . . . KDKA's Jon Delano interviewed Ansys CEO James Cashman and Tech Council rep Kevin Lane on the Sunday Business Page yesterday.

The Manifesto, the Diaspora, and the Second and Third Pittsburgh

Back at the beginning of 2007, or perhaps it was in late 2006, at the first face-to-face gathering of the group that developed the Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh and pushed the idea of the Pittsburgh Diaspora, we talked about the challenges and opportunities that the diaspora could address locally. Naive visionaries that we sometimes are, we talked about how diasporan capital -- financial capital and social capital -- might be capable of reviving the Monongahela Valley.

That's not going to happen, however, if local powers-that-be are determined finally to kill it. I haven't paid close attention to the plan to close Duquesne High School, but Chris Briem's data wrangling, coupled with eloquent posts by Jason Togyer and Jonathan Potts and some timely outrage from Mark Rauterkus, makes the issue unavoidable. There are two Pittsburghs today. There is the city and region that is the object of some guarded optimism courtesy of tech and arts and higher ed and health care that supports emerging economic development. Call that First World Pittsburgh. And there is the fading Steel Valley region with no advocates, but plenty of pure pessimism and worse. Call that Second World Pittsburgh. Our Manifesto is nominally addressed to both, but in reality our limited ability to affect First World Pittsburgh is diminishing rapidly when it comes to Second World Pittsburgh.

Couple those "two Pittsburghs" with these two Pittsburghs. Today's Post-Gazette headline says it all: "Pittsburgh's 'Livable' label called lie for blacks." The story and the meeting that it covers follow on this report from the University of Pittsburgh that describes the bleak condition of Pittsburgh's African-American population. There are clearly not two but three Pittsburghs. Call this Third World Pittsburgh, burdened by poverty and crime and no obvious way out.

Second World Pittsburgh and Third World Pittsburgh, the closing of Duquesne High School and the condition of the African-American community, are symptoms of a single problem. Describing it fully would take volumes, and my relative ignorance of Pittsburgh's history puts me at a disadvantage that is deeper than usual. The core problem, however, is simple: Pittsburgh's industrial economy shifted sharply downward shortly after WWII, at right around the same time that that city's African-American population was swelling with newcomers. Structurally, lots of new people arrived; yet jobs were on the way out. What we see today is the product of long-time systematic inattention to that combination. First World Pittsburgh largely takes care of First World Pittsburgh.

What to do? Here, all I can offer is a bit of additional blogging light -- like Chris, Jonathan, Jason, and Mark (and others whose blogs I haven't picked up yet), and the OneHOOD group featured in the Post-Gazette story, I share the sense that these are critical, even tragic problems. Our Manifesto and Diaspora projects have to include them as part of their agendas, naively optimistic as our group may sometimes be. The Diaspora should be metaphorically as well as literally geographic; the Manifesto needs to address all of Pittsburgh's Worlds. No number of new startups in Oakland will compensate for the disappearance of the Steel Valley, or the inequities described by Larry Davis and Ralph Bangs at Pitt.

Pittsburgh: A Metrotextual Community

My law school colleague Jim Chen, who recently was appointed Dean of the law school at the University of Louisville, mused recently about that law school's role in the Louisville community, and more broadly about the aspirations and role of the *urban* university -- as opposed to aspirations and roles of universities in generally. Much of his commentary applies to Pittsburgh, both university and city; Louisville, like Pittsburgh, is a river-based community. I've posted occasional thoughts about the University of Pittsburgh (on sports, on economic development, on reputation), so the Louisville post is timely.

Lawyers love plays on words, and academic lawyers love to tweak the noses of literary post-modernists. So Jim dodges the word "metropolitan," which conjures some Louisville taboos (Kentucky, it appears, self-identifies as rural), and instead coins the word "metrotextual" to describe his view of that city:

The central problems of our time are the problems of cities, of urban conglomerations so potent as to transcend earlier generations' conception of the "metropolis." To paraphrase the popular singer-songwriter, Natalie Merchant, "A woman of beauty / A woman of pain / In France or Jakarta" faces frustrations and harbors dreams every bit as much as "A woman of color / With debts to be paid / In Trenton or Detroit." At home or abroad, "Her shadow's the same."

By the same token, the world's metropolitan research universities hold the key to a brighter future for ourselves and our posterity. In his epochal book, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, Richard Florida quotes what he calls an "old German adage": Stadtluft macht frei. City air makes you free. Yes, today's cities generate many of the problems that confront contemporary societies. Led by their universities and their most engaged citizens, those cities offer hope. They offer solutions.

Read the whole thing here.
Here in Pittsburgh, Pitt aspires to prominence as a public research university; its urban identity -- dare I say its metrotextual identity -- is subsumed within that goal. Its metrotextuality, however, is worth pondering.

PA Legalizes Ticket Scalping Reselling

"Pennsylvania Governor Edward Rendell late Friday signed into law a bill that allows anyone to legally resell event tickets online. The new law became effective immediately.

The Keystone State joins Connecticut and New York as the most recent states to legalize ticket scalping, but requires resellers have a presence in the state.

Under the state’s old law, only licensed brokers could resell tickets, and then for a maximum of 25 percent about face value. The new law removes the cap and requires that the reseller guarantee a full refund if the event is cancelled or the ticket is not valid upon entry."

Link

No Sex Please, We're Pittsburghers

News from the 19th Century: Pittsburgh TV stations are refusing to air an ad for Trojan condoms. Seems that the ad reminds all of us that people have sex. Those same stations are implementing a "breast blackout" for Steelers broadcasts next Fall; images of sideline cheerleaders come that across the network feed will be intercepted and blacked out to protect the delicate sensitivities of local residents. Also, Comcast has announced that MTV will no longer be available in Pittsburgh.

Two of those sentences are not-so-funny jokes.

In other sin-related news, the state legislature has decided that local blue noses may continue to inhale clouds of blue smoke in public places as well as private ones.

What does Pittsburgh think it is? Seattle? When pigs fly!

Here's the offending Trojan ad:



[Post title inspired by this.]

Pitt's Bytes 7.16.07

The Post-Gazette's Bits & Bytes tech business column may or may not return, now that writer Cori Shropshire has left the Burgh for sunnier climes. Either way, a bloggy alternative is overdue. Introducing Pitt's Bytes, an occasional bit of online three-dot journalism that will include what interests me and what I hear about entrepreneurship -- tech and culture both -- in Pittsburgh. It can include what interests you and what you hear . . . but you have to share. To do that, read to the end of the post.

And away we go . . .

Is tech-oriented economic development in the works for the Hill, the Bluff, and Soho? Do we have another player for Pittsburgh's infamously bloated entrepreneurship middleware sector, or are we getting someone who knows how to connect ideas and money and then get out of the way? Hopefully, he's the latter. Welcome to the public eye to Point Breeze native William Generett, who recently took the helm of the new Pittsburgh Central Keystone Innovation Zone (KIZ). He has been director of economic development for the Hill House Economic Development Corp. . . . HELP evangelist Gary Rosensteel has lined up sponsorship for an entrepreneurship bash on the North Shore on Tuesday, September 18 from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at McFadden's, to celebrate the launch of helpstartups.com, Gary's long-sought web portal for the region's entrepreneurs . . . . September 18 may be a red-letter day in Pittsburgh tech circles: Project Olympus, the brainchild of CMU computer science prof Lenore Blum and Exhibit A among Pittsburgh's best efforts to seed the region with high-end computing startups, has another "show and tell" meeting for potential investors that day. . . . If you can't wait until September for your networking Jones, check out Jessica Lee's Entrepreneurial Thursdays at the Altar Bar in the Strip. . . . Donald Bonk, hired recently at CMU in a position funded by the Heinz Endowments to help build a local infrastructure for emerging companies with CMU connections, can't be sleeping much; he's making the rounds with an aggressive plan to leverage Pittsburgh technologists and investors via social networking technology -- and he wants to connect them in person, too. A CMU "entrepreneur's reunion" is on tap for October 18. . . .

A Pittsblog commenter noted recently: "Think about it - when was the last time you heard ANY thing about some well-funded startups like Renal Solutions and Akustica? are they still around???? Or from others like LogicLibrary and DesignAdvance after their former CEOs left? Or promising companies like Cohera and TalkShoe? Do they realize how much easier it will be to recruit talent later if people see/hear their names more often?" So true. Send your Bytes to Pittsblog.

Democrats for DeSantis

Chris Schultz, who runs the Green is Good blog here (all about Clean Tech and what Pittsburgh can do), has launched a "Democrats for DeSantis" blog to support Republican mayoral candidate Mark DeSantis. Chris writes:

The city of Pittsburgh has been ruled by one party for way too long. As those of you have seen here in the city and also at the national level - when one party is in power for too long things go to shit, to put it bluntly. It is time that politics and government here in the city become more about ideas and leadership rather than party affiliation.

I'm not in the endorsement business, but I've met Mark DeSantis, and he talks as if he could have written the Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh. That impresses me. Pittsburgh's party demographics are what they are; any Republican mayoral candidate faces an enormous uphill battle. But three months remain until the election, and the public campaigning is just getting underway. Hopefully, some number of voters and the print and TV media will look beyond the Democrat v. Republican labels and beyond the usual political sniping and gossiping and see the Ravenstahl v. DeSantis contest for what it should be: a debate about the future of the region.

Cat Juggling Licensing

I don't do politics much at Pittsblog, but Pittburgh City Councilman Jim Motznik's cat licensing proposal begs for YouTube commentary.
With cat licensing, we could reduce the burdens of cat herding:

And eliminate the horrors of cat juggling.

So Long, Cori Shropshire; Hello, Pittsburgh

The Post-Gazette's Cori Shropshire, who has covered the tech beat in town for the last few years, is joining the Pittsburgh Diaspora. Yesterday was her last day at the paper, and I'm told that she's moving to Houston. In today's column, she writes:

Thanks to all of you who stumbled out of bed on Saturday mornings to read Bits & Bytes. You kept me on my toes and made a tough beat challenging and fun. And to my anonymous tipsters ... you rock.

Thanks, Cori, for bringing some media sunshine and some good writing to the entrepreneurial scene in Pittsburgh, and good luck with your next gig.

Will the P-G appoint a new beat writer for tech and entrepreneurship? I hope so; the energy level surrounding entrepreneurship in Pittsburgh right now may be at an all-time high. The phrase I've heard repeatedly in face-to-face and email conversations over the last several weeks is "tipping point," as in, Pittsburgh is at a tipping point. All of these entrepeneurs and investors and technologists and researchers and artists, and even a lawyer or two, sense a window of opportunity. Will Pittsburghers seize it? Or will it pass, and will Pittsburgh remain a region of unfulfilled potential? I've heard it from media folks (though not at the P-G); from investors; from researchers; from entrepreneurs; and from local politicians.

If this really is a tipping point, then on the one hand, a good newspaper, particularly a local newspaper-of-record like the Post-Gazette, should be there in person to record and critique what's happening. Beat journalism remains key. On the other hand, several of my "tipping point" correspondents believe that the P-G is fast becoming irrelevant in this emerging space. Blogs and other, more modern communications tools are how information is being shared these days. If the New Pittsburgh is realized, the revolution will not be televised. It may be on YouTube and an RSS feed instead.

Passionately Pittsburgh

A Pittsblog shout-out to the Pittsburgh Passion, women footballers who have an undefeated record going into the 2007 National Women's Football Association Championship game next Saturday, July 21, in White's Creek, Tennessee. That's roughly halfway between Nashville and Knoxville.

The Passion have been passionately thumping their opponents all season long and beat the Cleveland Fusion 49-15 to advance to the championship.

Good News from the 'Hounds

The Resilient City Diaspora is at work already:

The Pittsburgh Riverhounds, who desire to become one of the premier soccer clubs in the United States, yesterday took a huge step toward that goal.

The Riverhounds signed a partnership agreement with the Everton Football Club of the English Premier League and will launch a soccer training academy this fall for youth players. The partnership will enable the Riverhounds to model the academy after the highly successful Everton training academy, use the same training methods and some of the same coaches.

Link

As a newcomer to Pittsburgh soccer almost 10 years ago, I'm pleased to see something like this finally start to come together. The partnership focuses on player development, not building an entertainment franchise, and that's exactly the right way to go. Suburban soccer in Pittsburgh has long lagged its counterparts in other regions, largely, I think, because the lack of meaningful foreign immigration to Pittsburgh in the latter part of the 20th century means that the player and coaching pool here didn't diversify in the way that it did in many other communities.

I grew up in suburban California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, playing with and being coached by Europeans, Latin Americans, East Asians, and immigrants from Caribbean countries, especially Jamaica. Much of that diversity was the influx of immigrants to California, but much of it was leveraging the international populations of the local universities. My guess is that Columbus soccer flourished before Pittsburgh because of the influence of the OSU population. Connecting Pittsburgh soccer to an international population, even one that's not as diverse as would be ideal, can only be a good thing. We'll be dancing and dribbling to the Merseybeat.

Moving Forward with the Manifesto, Part III

[Moving Forward, Part I, appears here.]
[Moving Forward, Part II, appears here.]

The Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh argues that in the 21st century, "connectivity is key and king." "Connectivity" means and includes lots of things, but one of them is reaching out for dialogues with other cities that share Pittsburgh's challenges -- and opportunities. Call one piece of this outreach the "Shrinking Cities" blogosphere. Or, more optimistically, a "Resilient Cities" blogosphere. For a start, consider:

Nearby -- I will shout youngstown
Farther away -- Mancubist: Life is good in Manchester. Mancubist seems to be somewhere between a cousin of Pittsblog and its doppelganger; it includes this this very timely and interesting post about a conference on the future of Manchester.

Use the comments to suggest links to other urban reinvention blogs.

Connecting a reinvented-steel-cities-diaspora-blogosphere is, of course, only the tip of a much bigger iceberg. If it chooses to, Pittsburgh can lead the creation of economic development networks and cultural development networks that focus on the histories and futures of similar communities. Put new energy into economic partnerships with industrial cities of England and Scotland. Pittsburgh Celebrates Glass! is a brilliantly conceived multi-dimensional citywide cultural event. Let's do something similar -- "Pittsburgh celebrates the future of steel" -- that puts regional and especially international connections front and center.

A Pittsburgh First: the Computer Virus

Born in Pittsburgh:

Rich Skrenta, a 1985 Mt. Lebanon High School graduate, is credited here with developing the first virus for a microcomputer -- when he was in the 9th grade. The virus celebrates its 25th birthday this year.

Skrenta moved on to bigger and better things. Computer viruses continue to play a big role in Pittsburgh.

[Thanks, Steve, for the tip; cross-posted at Pittsblog and Blog Lebo.]

Surveillance Update

The New York Times reports today on the effectiveness of video-based surveillance of public places in England:

Advocates of video surveillance say it has contributed to a long-term decline in other crimes in Britain. Car thieves, in particular, seem deterred by the prevalence of cameras on lampposts. But Dr. Murakami Wood [an expert in video surveillance at Newcastle University] noted the incidence of violent crime actually rose slightly last year.

Just as video surveillance does not prevent many crimes, it also apparently has less of an effect on ordinary human behavior than some critics feared it would when Britain began installing the cameras in earnest after a pair of Irish Republican Army bombings in 1993 and 1994.

Link

Original Pittsblog post on "The Pittsburgh Panopticon"

The Pittsburgh Diaspora Goes to Work

Jeffrey Taft is a road warrior in the global high-technology services economy, and his work shows why there are limits to the number of skilled jobs that can be shipped abroad in the Internet age.

Jeffrey Taft is a road warrior in the global high-technology services economy, and his work shows why there are limits to the number of skilled jobs that can be shipped abroad in the Internet age.

He is one of dozens of I.B.M. services employees from around the country who are working with a Texas utility, CenterPoint Energy, to install computerized electric meters, sensors and software in a “smart grid” project to improve service and conserve energy.

Read the whole story.

Meanwhile, at a July 3 party out here in the South Hills, I meet two Indians from Dallas who are working on a long-term consulting project in Pittsburgh.

Labor is mobile. Pittsburgh is everywhere.

Transparency Coming to PA Laws?

Important enough to quote in full. Congrats to local House frosh Lisa Bennington:

Pa. House votes to post state statutes in cyberspace

The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Pennsylvania would become the 50th state to make its statutes available over the Internet for free under a bill that passed the House unanimously on Wednesday.

Pennsylvania is the only state that currently does not maintain a public Web site that gives people the power to do their own legal research without purchasing legal textbooks or visiting a law library.

"If ever there was a good first bill, this is it," said Rep. Lisa Bennington, D-Allegheny [County], a freshman who was the prime sponsor. "We need to have greater transparency in government and in our laws."

The state's 79 groups of statutes, from Aeronautics to Zoning, are currently assembled in the 107-volume "Purdon's Pennsylvania Statutes Annotated," with two centuries of cross-references, footnotes and commentary. Purdon's is owned by the St. Paul, Minn.-based West Group, the country's largest legal publisher.


The Legislature began assembling its own consolidated statutes in 1970, but the project remains largely unfinished and what has been completed is not being posted on the Web. Bennington said she also is interested in jump-starting that process.

The bill was sent to the Senate for its consideration.

Link

The legislation is House Bill No. 976.

Moving Forward With the Manifesto, Part II

[Moving Forward, Part I, appears here.]

A Post-Gazette op-ed last weekend prompts me to resume my occasional posts about moving forward with the Manifesto for a New Pittsburgh.

Larry Davis and Ralph Bangs, both at Pitt, wrote:

A study released last week by the University of Pittsburgh's Center on Race and Social Problems confirmed, yet again, that African Americans in our region remain at the bottom of every measure of the quality of life, which include indicators of economic status, educational achievement, family stability and violence.

The key phrase in that key paragraph is "yet again." The Center's findings can come as no surprise to anyone who pays even casual attention to the shape of Pittsburgh's economy. This is a long-standing problem.

But I don't want to dwell on the history here; Davis and Bangs and their colleagues have that work to do. More important for my purposes is this question: As the engines of Pittsburgh's new economy groan slowly to life, what will be done to ensure that racial and ethnic populations in Pittsburgh, and especially, as Davis and Bangs point out, members of the African-American community, are included in efforts to reform the educational system, build stability in communities and neighborhoods, and grow the numbers of jobs in the region?

Davis and Bangs write that they want to work

to inspire government, philanthropic, educational, neighborhood and religious leaders to create and implement policies that are equitable, smart and
courageous. We also will call upon the black community to take ownership of this initiative, just as they took center stage in the civil rights movement a generation ago.

I wrote "what will be done" in the paragraph above, a passive construction that is answered only in part by this quotation. Lots of institutions and individuals have to work long and hard at addressing this problem. What will they do? Concrete proposals are needed. Here are only two in what should become river of them:

Republican mayoral candidate Mark DeSantis needs to find a way to get traction in pre-election news coverage. He needs to find issues beyond competence and cronyism in city government; otherwise, he not only won't get even 30% of the vote, but worse, he won't get anyone to listen to him. How about urban poverty? That's not usually a leading issue for Republicans, but with the incumbent already acting like he's won the race, Pittsburgh isn't facing a real election.

Are there Pittsburgh diasporan resources that can be called in? Take a look at the Board and the Steering Committee and Funders for the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, which will in time have a new facility Downtown. How many of those individuals and institutions are publicly linked to African-American communities and resources -- outside of Pittsburgh? How many Pittsburgh-area African-American alumni are represented?

This isn't my area of expertise. I'm simply throwing out possibilities. My point is this: optimism about Pittsburgh requires optimism about success for all of Pittsburgh, and then finding ways to ensure that success is just that broad.